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Phone Validator FAQ

Welcome to the Phone Validator FAQ list.

General

I'm considering to use your phone number validation service but I'm concerned about the privacy of my data.

Phone-Validator is a service operated by Byteplant, a company located in Germany and operating according to EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards and the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) - one of the strictest data protection and privacy legislations in the world(see Bundesdatenschutzgesetz for details).

We do not process or store addresses for any purpose other than validation.

We do not share any client data with any third party at any time.

We retain personal data processed on behalf of our clients for as long as needed to provide services to our clients.

All data from API requests and batch/list processing will be automatically deleted within 14 days after the data has been made available to us.

Do you actually call the phone numbers during the validation process?

No - the phone numbers are not contacted in any way, nor will any phones connected to a line ring during the entire validation process.

Does your phone validation service work for mobile numbers and landline/fixed line numbers?

Yes, Phone-Validator supports any type of number: mobile, landline/fixed line, VoIP etc.

Can you detect the line type of a given phone number? Is your service compliant with the FCC Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)?

Yes, during the validation process we also detect the exact line type (landline vs. mobile) to ensure full compliance with the FCC Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

Which countries does your phone validation service cover?

Our Phone-Validator service covers 240+ countries world-wide.

Phone Validator REST Web API
Which availability do you guarantee for the Phone Validator service?

Our Phone Number Validation Online API is hosted at three different locations in Europe. We guarantee an availability of 99.9% - please see the API server status page for real-time availability information.

What is the average API response time?

API requests will be typically answered within 750ms.

Phone Validator Results
What is the difference between VALID_CONFIRMED and VALID_UNCONFIRMED?

For mobile numbers we have direct 3-way redundant world-wide provider access and the validation results are confirmed by live network queries. Landline numbers are confirmed by directory lookups. Invalid landlines are detected with 100% accuracy, and landline numbers which are currently assigned/connected/live will be identified as VALID_CONFIRMED with an accuracy of > 90%. Phone numbers with a VALID_UNCONFIRMED status are valid according to the current national and international phone numbering plans (correct number of digits, valid prefix etc.), but the validation process did not find positive evidence that the number is currently assigned/connected/live.

Phone Validator List Processing
How do I validate phone numbers from a database or CRM system?

Databases, CRM systems and Excel are capable to export data to CSV (comma-separated values) files - please see the answer to the next question for instructions on how to upload a CSV file for validation.

Why does the list upload web form report thousands of phone numbers, when I only uploaded a few hundred?

Our automatic format detection tries to detect and convert files submitted in many common spreadsheet and archive formats, but this sometimes fails. If this happens, make sure you submit your list in one of the following formats:

If you have a spreadsheet, use your spreadsheet software to export the list to text/csv format.

You can check your list with our Phone List Validator tool before uploading.

Why does my validation task not start automatically, even though I paid the correct amount?

We use a third-party service (FastSpring) to manage payments. Please use the same email address both for your validation task and for the Share-It purchase, so that the task to start can be identified. If you already used a different email address, please send us an email so we can start your task manually.

How do I validate phone numbers from Excel or a CSV file?

You can start the validation process by uploading a CSV (one phone number per line, use the column headers 'phone' and 'country' for the ISO two-letter country code [optional]).

Excel files must be exported to CSV first:

  • Open the file in Excel.
  • Click Menu | Save As (Other Formats).
  • Enter a name for the file and choose "Unicode Text (*.txt)".
  • Click Save.

Account Management
How do I log into my FastSpring account to manage my orders, subscriptions and invoices?

You can log into the FastSpring Customer Care Center using the following steps:

After you have updated your information, click "Save Data".

Why am I unable to login to my account?

We use a third-party service (FastSpring) to manage payments. Share-It implement their own customer accounts. Please do not confuse Share-It accounts with Address Validator accounts, both may use different email addresses and/or passwords.

How do I cancel my subscription?

We use a third-party service (FastSpring) to manage payments. Find instructions to cancel a subscription here.